Too Close For Comfort (12 page)

‘You OK?’ he said, still gripping me.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said briskly, breaking away. ‘Where’s good for coffee?’

A juggernaut swung past us, farting toxic fumes in all directions.

‘Don’t panic,’ said Jim, setting off but looking back to check I was following. ‘I’ve got a plan.’

*

It was a branch of one of those fake French bistros that I’d never ordinarily bother with – blackboard menus covered in pretentious curly writing and leathery steak
frites. Still, when Jim charmed the waitress into giving us a booth, a red velvet oasis with curved walls that gave the illusion of seclusion, all my urban snobbery melted to nothing. I sank into
it gratefully, then checked myself again. He didn’t deserve even a drop of my gratitude. When he tried to order me a latte, I swiftly changed it to tea. I didn’t want to give him the
satisfaction of second-guessing me.

‘So how were the rozzers?’ he asked.

I hated his refusal to take all this seriously, but a part of me also welcomed it. I’d seen Lawrence Krall only briefly today, a snatched moment in a corridor, but he’d been intense
and serious. He’d asked about Lysette’s reaction to her interview, probing questions that were gift-wrapped in easy charm. She seemed unusually distressed, he said, far more than anyone
else outside the immediate families of the dead. As a professional, did I think her reaction was in proportion? I’d told him a little waspishly that I didn’t feel comfortable discussing
my friend, but I felt his eyes lingering on me, analysing my reaction whilst he trotted out an apology.

‘You know. Rozzer-ish.’

‘Meaning?’ asked Jim.

‘They’re nosy, aren’t they? But then, it’s in their job description.’

‘Aah. They were asking about Lysette and you didn’t want to break the Brownie code of honour and talk about her behind her back.’

He gave a little Brownie salute as he said it, grinning at me from behind his frothy coffee, which had arrived almost immediately. The place was deserted; we were in that graveyard slot between
lunch and dinner, the place populated more by staff than customers.

‘Do you have to turn everything into a joke?’ I snapped. It bugged me, the way he was dumb and sharp all at once.

‘It’s not a joke. I’m worried about her. I’ve been worried for months. That’s why I wanted to meet up.’

‘OK.’

‘And I wanted to see you, obviously. It’s ridiculous that we never saw each other again.’ After . . . after that. A sliver of the past – the ambulance
swinging around the corner of our suburban street, flashing and wailing. I looked away, conscious his eyes were trained on me. I couldn’t go there.

‘When you say for months, what do you mean?’

‘She’s not been herself. If I ring her after eight, it seems like she’s rambling.’ I thought about that half-empty bottle she’d produced the night before the
funeral: I was pretty sure it hadn’t been in the fridge earlier that day. And then . . . she’d driven off, car speeding down the lane, most likely over the limit.
‘I don’t want to judge her for needing a sundowner, it must be pretty boring to have the school run as the highlight of your day, but it’s affecting her. You’ve seen the
temper she’s got on her now. She’s always been such a bloody earth mother but now she snaps at those kids for anything.’

‘But . . .’ I was determined he should be wrong, although it was true that I’d seen her be unnecessarily sharp with Saffron about bedtime. ‘It’s not
like I haven’t seen her, Jim! We had dinner in London a couple of months ago and . . . and me and Patrick came down for Sunday lunch as well.’

I liked saying his name out loud. Jim’s eyebrows rose, almost imperceptibly.

‘Bet you ordered a second bottle at dinner,’ he continued. It was true: I shrugged my assent. ‘And it’s not like you’ve ever given George Best a run for his money
in the drinking stakes.’ Sadness settled inside me, heavy as stone. Was he right: was I was like a Brownie who’d never grown up, still insisting Lysette and I were in the toadstool set?
What if she’d been putting on a good show when she saw me, humouring me, then going back to the real friends who knew her better now? Had I missed a cry for help and then come here too late
to make a difference?

‘But, if you are right . . . why? Why would things have changed so much? She loves the kids, Ged’s a good husband. I know she gets frustrated about her career,
but . . .’

It was so different, her life. I realised as I said it how hard it was to put myself in her shoes, or her in mine. Our frustrations probably looked petty and benign from the outside, but I knew
that when I was dealing with a patient who was a suicide risk, or wondering if my body would ever choose to cooperate, it felt all-consuming. I got the feeling even from a few days here that the
things in Little Copping that looked petty from the outside probably felt anything but, once you were trapped inside.

‘You’re not going to like this answer.’ He grinned again. ‘Scrub that, perhaps you will. I know it sounds bad to even say it, but I think it was Sarah.’

How did he know about my awful, childish, seething jealousy? I didn’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it, just lowered my voice, switched into professional mode. It can be a
good place to hide out.

‘How do you mean? I thought she was this incredible support to Lysette.’

‘Think she was more of a partner in crime. I could be wrong . . . it’s not like my sister spends her time pouring her heart out to me, but she just had that air about
her, you know?’

‘I only met her the once.’ Looking back on it, I realised I’d found her oddly dazzling, like I was caught in her headlights. The light she shone was too blinding to pick out
the details of her, even for a chronic over-analyser like me. ‘She seemed – she seemed like a force of nature.’

‘Yeah, a tornado,’ said Jim, acidly. I could tell in that instant that he really didn’t like her. ‘Trust me, they can rip up a whole town.’

‘Stop talking in code. Just spit out whatever it is you’re trying to imply.’

The anger kept creeping up on me, my words spiky and pointed. He paused, looked at me, his eyes raking my face. He didn’t want me, but he wanted to know if I still wanted him. Even here,
even now. I slopped some water into my glass, refusing to meet his gaze.

‘I think she was a hedonist. She was a thrill-seeker, you know? I’m not sure 2.4 children and a picket fence was the life for her.’

‘So they went out and got drunk? So what?’

‘Thing is, I don’t think it was just Chardonnay,’ he said, his green eyes steady and serious now.

‘Drugs? Oh come on. What, they were getting stoned? Lysette’s always liked the odd spliff. You couldn’t be married to Ged and not.’

‘Mmm. I don’t know. I might be making two and two equal seven, but Rowena said there were a hell of a lot of toilet trips at her birthday dinner in January, and the last time I
heard, cystitis isn’t contagious.’

‘Lysette had a birthday dinner?’

Jim’s look of amusement was infuriating. ‘Calm down, it was on a Tuesday. It was just a local thing at the Italian in the village. You wouldn’t have wanted to trek out of town
for it.’

Maybe I wouldn’t, but it would’ve been nice to have been given the option. I sent Lysette a bunch of flowers and her thank-you text made no mention of it.

‘What, so you’re saying they got all Scarface on a Tuesday at Signor Luigi’s? Oh come on!’

‘It’s called Little Sicily, and do you get all your information about what happens outside the M25 from
Country File
, is that it?’

‘No, but . . .’

I knew Lysette had taken drugs in her time. She’d gone through a clubbing stage – getting all sweaty on ecstasy and leaving me loved-up messages telling me I was her best friend
– but that was nearly twenty years ago. I’d never ventured out with her, never wanted the loss of self-control, so what did I really know? But still, the idea she’d reversed her
way back into it two years short of forty, with three children and a husband to think about, seemed utterly inexplicable. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was the absolute opposite.

‘Listen, I hope I’m wrong,’ said Jim, ‘but there’s definitely been something up with her for the last few months. I thought you might have some ideas.’

‘Clearly not,’ I said mulishly, still smarting from my exclusion from her party.

‘What about your professional opinion?’

‘I’m here as her friend, Jim,’ I said, ‘I can’t get into that.’

We both sat there a second in silence.

‘I’m worried, Mia, with what’s just happened.’ We looked at each other. ‘She’s being shifty. If she does know stuff that’s relevant, you’ve got to
persuade her to share it. I don’t want her to get herself in real trouble.’

Hearing him articulate it so clearly sent a jolt of dread through my body. I shouldn’t be here in the midst of all of this, and yet in another way there was nowhere else I could be.

‘I can try. I just – if she felt like I was trapping her, she’d never forgive me.’

‘You don’t have to trap her, but you do have to help her.’ Our eyes met a second too long. ‘Fuck it,’ said Jim, holding up his hands in surrender, the moment
broken. ‘I can’t deny it. I want a proper drink. Don’t let me be lonely.’

‘We’re going to Kimberley’s tonight. I don’t want to start early.’

‘Come on, Mia, live dangerously.’

I’d been keeping everything fun to a minimum recently – coffee, sugar, wine – hoping that making my body a temple would do the trick.

‘Fine. One small glass. White. The nicest one.’

‘Your wish is my command,’ said Jim, doffing an imaginary cap.

The waitress sailed over the second he so much as started to smile. It was no wonder he thought life was no more than the punchline to his joke.

*

‘When you say Sarah was a party girl,’ I said, once our drinks had arrived, ‘what’s your actual evidence, apart from your red hot gossip from Signor
Luigi’s?’

Jim was having a pretentious French lager. He raised the green bottle to his lips, his eyes narrowing as he formulated a response. I knew I should leave soon. The nosy part of me had been
looking forward to observing Kimberley in her perfect show home, but now the hour was almost upon me, now this conversation had been had, I felt nothing but queasy dread. I glanced at my phone to
see if Patrick had rung, but there were no missed calls. I sent him a quick X from inside my bag, then wondered if it was trite.

‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Jim. ‘I thought you wanted to stay out of it.’

It was a good question.

‘You can’t drop something like that and then not qualify it.’

‘Is this a roundabout way of asking if I think she was shagging the teacher?’

‘Do you?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s not like I saw them together more than once or twice. And that was only thanks to that blonde . . . you know, bossy but fit. She made us go
to a quiz night.’

‘Kimberley?’ I said, irritatingly irritated by his description. Besides, she was a minor celebrity: he knew exactly who she was, which meant he’d only described her that way to
try and elicit a rise.

‘That’s the one. She’s always organising these massive fundraisers. Our kids aren’t even at the school but she still ropes us in. Rowena gets on with her.’

‘Does she?’ I said.

‘What, you don’t like her?’

‘I’ve only just got here!’ I said.

‘Yes, but you’ve always been a girl with strong opinions.’ Jim cocked his head. ‘You’ve made a career out of it. You don’t like her, do you?’

‘I’ll know better after tonight,’ I said primly.

If – if what he said was true, would they be taking drugs? That was ridiculous – I was being paranoid now. Surely Kimberley wouldn’t be that stupid, with so much to lose. With
Sarah barely cold in her grave, it would have to be a sombre affair.

‘Your first rural dinner party! Watch yourself, Mia. You’ll be chewing straw and swilling cider before you know it.’

‘I’ve seen their house from the outside. Not much chance of that.’

Jim’s eyes flicked around the space. He’d never been able to resist it – that compulsion to check he wasn’t missing out on something better. I waited it out.

‘I didn’t trust her,’ he said eventually, his voice like lead. ‘Right from the first time I met her.’

‘Sarah?’

‘Yeah. She seemed all bubbly, but it was an act. It was a way to suck people in.’

The silence that came next felt thick. I watched Jim weighing up whether or not to go further. When I spoke I kept my tone deliberately light, my wine glass sailing towards my mouth.

‘It’s fine, you don’t have to tell me . . .’

He fell for it.

‘Violet told Rowena this thing . . .’ He looked at me, his expression serious. ‘It frightened me, Mia. Lysette and Sarah – by the sound of things they were
doing coke on a playdate. It started with testing Prosecco for some party, next thing I reckon they were doing sneaky lines off the kitchen counter.’

‘What, your daughter saw them doing it?’

‘No, but . . . just her description of walking in on them . . . that’s what it sounded like to me.’

There was something so grim about the image of it. The two of them scrabbling to sweep away the drugs, concealing their high.

‘So did you confront Lysette?’

Jim nodded, pain twisting his handsome face out of shape.

‘I took her out. To the pub – probably the wrong call. She got really angry with me. Said Sarah was her best friend . . .’ He looked at me. ‘She
didn’t mean it. It’s always been you – little sis, little sis sidekick.’ I wished he wouldn’t keep doing that – rubbing the lamp, calling up the genie of our
shared past. ‘She said that Violet had got it wrong. But I know when she’s lying . . .’ Jim’s hands dropped heavily to his knees, a gesture of helplessness.
‘Since Sarah died . . . I’m worried she’s getting worse, not better. I’m just hoping you being here will bring her back to herself.’

We stared at each other, the fear in our faces a strange kind of mirror.

‘I can try.’

Jim paused. ‘Did you tell her we were meeting?’

‘No,’ I admitted. I knew I probably should’ve done – the last thing this situation needed was more secrets – but the words had jammed in my throat when I tried to
spit them out.